When Bob Kane Charged $3 an Autograph

People sometimes ask me what the biggest change in this hobby has been since I started. They expect me to talk about authentication, or the internet, or prices. And those things have all changed. But the answer I keep coming back to is a small convention in Charleston in the early 1990s, and a man signing his name for three dollars.

A different kind of show

Conventions back then weren’t the events they are today. There were no timed photo ops, no online autograph pre-sales and no lines snaking around the hall. You walked in, looked around, and if a guest was there, you usually just walked up to the table. Shows were smaller, quieter and a little rough around the edges. Most of the people in the room were serious fans and dealers, not the crowds you see now.

Bob Kane was one of the guests at that Charleston show. This was the man credited with creating Batman, one of the best-known characters in the world. And he was charging $3 an autograph.

Three dollars. Not three hundred. Not thirty. Three.

Why it didn’t feel remarkable

Here’s the part that’s hard to explain to newer collectors: at the time, it didn’t feel strange. Nobody was rushing his table. Nobody was whispering that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. It was a fair price for a signature at a regional show, and that was simply what the market was.

Comic creators in that era were respected by the people who followed comics closely, but they weren’t celebrities in the way movie and television stars were. The people who wrote and drew the stories were names on a credits box. Most of the general public couldn’t have told you who created Batman, even though nearly everyone knew Batman.

The table across the room

Stan Lee was at that same convention. I remember his table being almost empty.

Think about that for a second. Today, Stan Lee is one of the most recognizable faces in pop culture history. His signature is one of the most collected — and, unfortunately, one of the most forged — in the entire hobby. Years later, people would wait hours and pay serious money for a few seconds at his table. But on that day in Charleston, you could have walked right up to him with no line at all.

I don’t tell that story to make anyone feel bad about the past. I tell it because it shows how completely the ground can shift. Nobody in that room was being foolish. The demand just wasn’t there yet.

What changed

A lot of things happened between that show and today. Superhero films went from occasional releases to the biggest business in Hollywood. Creators who had worked mostly behind the scenes became public figures, and Stan Lee in particular became a familiar face to millions of people who had never read a comic book. Comic conventions grew from hotel ballrooms into enormous events. The internet connected collectors everywhere and turned local markets into a single global one.

And as those creators passed on, the supply of authentic signatures stopped growing. A signature that was easy to get in the early 1990s is now part of a fixed pool, with more collectors than ever competing for it.

None of that was obvious from a folding table in Charleston.

The lesson I keep relearning

After more than forty years around this hobby, I’ve learned to be humble about predictions. I’ve watched names that seemed like sure things fade, and I’ve watched people who sat at quiet tables become legends. The market isn’t driven only by talent or importance. It’s driven by timing, by culture, by the movies and shows that come later, and by things no one in the room can see coming.

That’s why I always give the same advice, especially to newer collectors: collect what genuinely interests you, collect it well, and keep good records of where and how you got it. Ask for the signature from the person whose work matters to you, even if no one else seems to care. Take care of what you have. If it ever becomes valuable, that’s a bonus. If it doesn’t, you still have something you love and a story to go with it.

The ones that got away

Every longtime collector has a list of things they wish they’d bought. Mine includes a few more three-dollar signatures than I care to admit.

Sometimes the items and signatures that seem ordinary in the moment are exactly the ones collectors wish they had picked up years later. The quiet table, the easy price, the guest nobody is talking about — those moments rarely announce themselves. So the next time you walk past a table with no line, it might be worth stopping.

— The Captain